Seret Ahl Al-Daye (Daye: The Story of the People of Light),
The first one was the 2018 Ayar Nari (Gunshot), which was not well received by film critics when it premiered in the second El Gouna Film Festival. The script suffered from repetitiveness and incoherent development but the film was attacked mostly for its negative take on the 2011 Revolution.
I tried hard to erase this experience from my mind as I embarked on the duo’s second effort, which opened the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia last November, then participated in the Generation section of the Berlinale this February — good reasons to be hopeful. Daye means light in Arabic.
It is the name of the protagonist, who is a 14-year-old Nubian albino (Badr Mohamed) living in the southern city of Aswan with his mother (Sudanese actress Islam Mubarak) and his sister (Haneen Said). The first few scenes show how he is bullied at school, where the only person who believes in his talents is his music teacher Sabrin (the Saudi Arabian singer and actress Aseel Omran).
Daye has a great voice when he sings Mohamed Mounir’s songs, and the plot revolves around his teacher helping him to follow his dream of becoming a singer. She is teaching and training him to participate in the young talents programme The Voice, but his overprotective mother believes that the best way to deal with his condition is to isolate him from any activity, even school, so he could be away from harm, whether it is the sun or bullying.
The pivotal event in the drama takes place when Sabrine runs to Daye’s house to tell him and his family that he was accepted in The Voice. However, since his father abandoned the family they have been suffering from a shortage of money, so Daye’s mother, unable to go with him, initially refuses to let him go — until Sabrine decides to take them in her car to Cairo.
The film becomes a road movie about the struggle of Daye, his mother, sister and teacher to go from Aswan to Cairo. Al-Shinnawi and Dabbour put a few obstacles in their way, which results in the entire story line consisting of one unconvincing coincidence after another.
At the start of their journey, they are attacked by a gang of criminals who take their money, mobile phones and the car. They are saved by a lorry filled of women farmers whose boss (Arafa Abdel-Rasoul) has a sense of humour, and she takes them to the nearest town without much ado.
To make these incidents events appealing to the audience, the filmmaker gives the key role in each to a major celebrity, creating a short story out of each incident with its protagonist. Al-Shinnawi is trying to capitalise on his success in the TV series Lam Shamsiya, many of whose stars perform cameo roles: Mohamed Shahin, the main villain in Lam Shamsiya, plays a train conductor; Amina Khalil plays the director of Lamis Al-Hadidi’s talk show...
The filmmaker uses the popularity of other film stars too: Sabry Fawwaz plays the villain Gouda, a merchant and barge owner who trades from and to Cairo on the Nile. In his first appearance he underprices the handcrafts that Daye’s mother has made and when she asks him to be kind to her children, he responds by saying he is much kinder than their father who left. The drama gives Daye’s family a small revenge on him when they force him to take them in his barge to Cairo.
Al-Shinnawi also uses Ahmed Helmy to play a firefighter who suffered facial injuries while saving children in the past. He helps Daye and his sister to find their mother and Sabrina when they are separated.
Another silly subplot is the relationship between the teacher Sabrine whom the film reveals to be Christian at the beginning, and Youannas (Mohamed Mamdouh), who would help them as soon as they arrive to Cairo to go to the Egyptian Media Production City to attend the TV programme. This subplot was very clichéd especially in the scene between Sabrine and her mother (Hanan Sulieman) in the church as she lectures her about not being married when girls her age already have kids.
The film ends with another coincidence that brings Daye face to face with Mohamed Mounir himself, and Mounir tells him that no programme in the world will make you a star, but rather talent, effort, and dedication. However, the film ends when Daye arrives with his family and friends at the Egyptian Media Production City to find the programme is finished. And the last coincidence is that Lamis Al-Hadidi offers to bring him on air because his live video with Mounir has gone viral. To seal the overabundance of mediocrity, on air Daye asks the administration of Al-Hadidi’s talk show to take them after the shooting to Aswan by airplane, and to find the gang that took Sabrine’s car.
The selection committee has chosen Sara Gohar’s Happy Birthday as Egypt’s representative for this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The announcement was made two weeks ago. What’s truly surprising is that Daye was among the seven competing films. How did the committee feel when they saw the film, believing that this level of mediocrity and shallowness could have represented Egypt at the Oscars, competing alongside films that have won top awards at the world’s most prestigious film festivals? And how could the producers of Daye have believed that this film deserved a nomination in the first place?
* A version of this article appears in print in the 18 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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